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sgiessl · 06-29-2011, 11:58 AM

perma, thanks for your review.

the video on http://www.focus.de/digital/multimed...vid_25706.html shows both the iriver story hd and the amazon kindle side by side.
they don't make a statement about the contrast but state that their impression with PDF or newspapers is better than for the kindle (mainly due to the higher resolution). judging from the video, I would say that the contrast of both devices is about the same.

today I got a story hd myself. being mostly interested in PDF, I can share the following first impressions with PDF:

I'm very impressed by the sharpness and contrast of the display, especially in sunlight
under good light circumstances, I can read books with an original size of 170 × 242 mm without switching to landscape mode. the text is rather small but for me it's OK, even for mathematical formulas. this is my personal impression, I imagine that it's too small for others, and difficult to read in bumpy environments such as a bus.
PDF zoom works like this: 1. you press the zoom button, zoom in/out using i and o keys. the clipping of the document can be moved using the arrows keys.
Probably as in any other eReader, it's a very slow process to move between different regions within a single large PDF page. For interactive reading of large format newspapers and such (where you need to zoom and pan very often), you are probably better off with a tablet computer.
Turning pages is indeed quite fast (but I don't know how it feels for other reader devices)
Switching between landscape and portrait mode is a little bit inefficient: 1. press rotate button, 2. select one of the three rotation modes with the arrow keys, 3. apply the new rotation using enter key. I would have preferred simply toggling between two rotation settings by pressing the rotation key once.
Bug (?): In landscape mode, documents can not be zoomed in/out. The zoom level is fixed to fit the width of the page. For documents with a lot of space landscape-zooming would be desirable.
Bug (?): Zoom settings are lost when closing the current document.
Bug: The table of contents of my PDF's is displayed, but unfortunately you can't jump to the entries (even though it works with any other PDF reader on the PC). The electronic manual which is shipped with the device as PDF has a table of contents which DOES work.
It's not possible to add textual annotations to pages, or write down general notes. You can, however, annotate pages using bookmarks and words which you looked up in the dictionary while viewing a page.
General note: I would have preferred hardware keys which are larger and more soft. But I can get used to them when typing using my fingernails.

These are mostly software related issues and I hope the bugs will be addressed.

For me, I believe I can live with 8. and 9. by a work-around: Pre-processing my PDF's to have smaller white margins. Haven't tested it yet.

06-29-2011, 11:58 AM	#6
sgiessl Junior Member Posts: 7 Karma: 66 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: iRiver Story HD	perma, thanks for your review. the video on http://www.focus.de/digital/multimed...vid_25706.html shows both the iriver story hd and the amazon kindle side by side. they don't make a statement about the contrast but state that their impression with PDF or newspapers is better than for the kindle (mainly due to the higher resolution). judging from the video, I would say that the contrast of both devices is about the same. today I got a story hd myself. being mostly interested in PDF, I can share the following first impressions with PDF: I'm very impressed by the sharpness and contrast of the display, especially in sunlight under good light circumstances, I can read books with an original size of 170 × 242 mm without switching to landscape mode. the text is rather small but for me it's OK, even for mathematical formulas. this is my personal impression, I imagine that it's too small for others, and difficult to read in bumpy environments such as a bus. PDF zoom works like this: 1. you press the zoom button, zoom in/out using i and o keys. the clipping of the document can be moved using the arrows keys. Probably as in any other eReader, it's a very slow process to move between different regions within a single large PDF page. For interactive reading of large format newspapers and such (where you need to zoom and pan very often), you are probably better off with a tablet computer. Turning pages is indeed quite fast (but I don't know how it feels for other reader devices) Switching between landscape and portrait mode is a little bit inefficient: 1. press rotate button, 2. select one of the three rotation modes with the arrow keys, 3. apply the new rotation using enter key. I would have preferred simply toggling between two rotation settings by pressing the rotation key once. Bug (?): In landscape mode, documents can not be zoomed in/out. The zoom level is fixed to fit the width of the page. For documents with a lot of space landscape-zooming would be desirable. Bug (?): Zoom settings are lost when closing the current document. Bug: The table of contents of my PDF's is displayed, but unfortunately you can't jump to the entries (even though it works with any other PDF reader on the PC). The electronic manual which is shipped with the device as PDF has a table of contents which DOES work. It's not possible to add textual annotations to pages, or write down general notes. You can, however, annotate pages using bookmarks and words which you looked up in the dictionary while viewing a page. General note: I would have preferred hardware keys which are larger and more soft. But I can get used to them when typing using my fingernails. These are mostly software related issues and I hope the bugs will be addressed. For me, I believe I can live with 8. and 9. by a work-around: Pre-processing my PDF's to have smaller white margins. Haven't tested it yet.